Knowing and Doing – The Difference Affects Results

One is you realize that to be successful, you only have to apply a few simple principles, most of which contain an element of common sense.

Another is that you learn that applying those principles is surprisingly difficult to do.

This last pearl of hard-earned wisdom helps when I read articles and posts about ways to improve business results, that we’ve known about for years.

It prevents me from becoming cynical – even when the authors package them as a new breakthrough that only they were capable of making.

Why is that?

It’s because I know that we – owners, executives, and even consultants – are constantly blind-sided by the day-to-day pressures of running a business. And that makes us lose sight of these fundamentally simple, common sense concepts.

So there’s a real benefit to having them repeated.

Doing the right thing.

Someone much smarter than I am once said “Knowing the right thing to do isn’t difficult. Doing the right thing is what’s difficult.”

I know that’s true.

We work every day with business owners and their teams who often know what to do to be successful (they have a good strategy) but who have difficulty actually doing those things (executing their strategy).

We’re no smarter than they are.

But we have the benefit of being able to focus on linking their strategy to action, helping them get buy-in throughout their organization and then holding them accountable for doing what they said they would.

No distractions for us.

Staying focused on a manageable number of activities which will have a high impact on the future and produce a high return on the resources invested in them, produces good business results.

No surprises there, right?

I could have used a bunch of big words to make the same point.

Or I could have proclaimed this was a new technique that would guarantee results.

But it’s not. It’s wisdom that’s been well proven over time.

Something, however, that bears repeating by a third party that, because of their perspective, can see woods without being blinded by the trees.

It’s worth thinking about as many of us head into annual business planning season.